Our source of information from people who were actually there is almost completely gone. Very soon it will be completely gone. If you know one of the vets, see if you can get them to tell about all the little things, as well as the big ones. I guarantee you will have "10,000 questions" when they aren't around to be asked anymore.
I watched the first episode of the Pacific again the other night, specifically looking for the "reload" and any other things that seemed...odd. Found a few that were clearly production / sequence goofs, but not many.
What I did notice is the announcement "RELOAD!" was a command (and status announcement) from the machinegunner. It tells the gun crew to reload the gun, as well as telling those in earshot the gun is down for reloading. They showed this several times.
A little later during the same fight, a couple of the riflemen also shout "reload" while reloading their rifles. This may have been the practice in training at the time, either local unit or Corps wide, I have no idea, or may have been the fact that the riflemen were part of the MG squad, or it may just have been the director's idea of something dramatic to say.
Remember that Guadalcanal was the first major land battle for the Marines (or any us militaty that weren't already dead or Japanese POWs), and they went into combat with the pre war training, some of which proved to be very flawed.
I watched the first episode of the Pacific again the other night, specifically looking for the "reload" and any other things that seemed...odd. Found a few that were clearly production / sequence goofs, but not many.
What I did notice is the announcement "RELOAD!" was a command (and status announcement) from the machinegunner. It tells the gun crew to reload the gun, as well as telling those in earshot the gun is down for reloading. They showed this several times.
A little later during the same fight, a couple of the riflemen also shout "reload" while reloading their rifles. This may have been the practice in training at the time, either local unit or Corps wide, I have no idea, or may have been the fact that the riflemen were part of the MG squad, or it may just have been the director's idea of something dramatic to say.
Remember that Guadalcanal was the first major land battle for the Marines (or any us militaty that weren't already dead or Japanese POWs), and they went into combat with the pre war training, some of which proved to be very flawed.
